The winners of the 2012 World Fantasy Awards were just announced here in Toronto, Canada - and the Best Novel Award didn't go to George R.R. Martin or to Jo Walton, who'd already swept the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Instead, it went to Lavie Tidhar's Osama, a strange pulp-oriented alt history about Osama Bin Laden.

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Here's the description of Osama from Amazon.com:

In a world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante…

Certainly a lot more topical, and arguably a lot more experimental, than A Dance With Dragons. Here are the rest of the winners, and finalists, via the World Fantasy Awards page: